Reverend Elaine’s “Reflections”

March, 2011

The trees stand bare against a bright blue sky, naked in their grief of emptiness. An air of expectancy fills the air as birds sit in their branches and the sun shines. They stand as sentinels of hope, bones of death, limbs of life, waiting for the right time, the time of warming sun and melting snow, waiting for the breathe of God.

Soon, the sap will rise and they will live again, resplendent in green, regal in beauty reaching skyward to heaven raising branches in praise of the one who breathes life. Birds will once more sing songs of joy in their branches busily making homes and bringing forth life. Soon people will rest in the shade of their great limbs enjoying peace and rest, but not yet.

The trees rest now, stark and bare like broken bones of death in the winter time of waiting. Our lives often resemble the bare tree, apparently devoid of life, sad and broken branches of despair littering the land at our feet, waiting.

Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones speaks to us of loss and pain; of deep brokenness and death. A grief that is so heavy that it cannot be lifted, alone. A life so broken that it cannot live. Joy is gone, and only the heavy broken ground of emptiness remains.

I am sure we have all experienced these times in our lives when everything has seemed desolate and we cannot move; when the landscape around us is dark and terrifying. What can be more terrifying than the idea of dry broken bones, remnants of what was coupled with an inability to reach for what can be?

As the Tree stands against the great snow, wind and ice storms of winter, branches cracking under the strain, we too wait in our brokenness, broken lives and communities, broken hearts and bodies, indeed a broken world. These broken times are times of mourning and anger, times of failure and overwork, times that our life’s spark appears to be gone.

What can we do to re-animate our broken and lifeless bones? How can we recover when our mantra is one of being lost, wiped out and broken?

In the dark month of February, Joyce Rupp, invites us to prayerfully consider what causes the times of our lives when we feel like those dry bones, those dead bare trees, lacking in life, zest and vitality; aching for beauty and joy once again. She lists things to pay attention to in our lives, things that will help us, with God, to bring our bones together, things that may prevent us from falling apart. In that list on page 32, of her book, there are some that caused me to stop, and think, they were “prayer and attention to inner being”, “permission to make mistakes”, “forgiveness of self or others” and “time to grieve”.

Imagine our world, communities and lives if we stopped regularly to pay attention to our inner being, gave ourselves time to grieve our losses, allowed ourselves to fail, if we offered forgiveness not only to others, but to ourselves.

These are not easy things to do. It is not easy to enter the deep silence of self where we hope to encounter the living God, neither is it easy to fail, to be open to knowing that even our failures can bring us closer to God, realizing that we are not in control and that things we do wrong can be put to good in Gods world in God’s ways. Forgiving ourselves can be one of the hardest things to do, forgiving a word spoken in haste or an action of retribution. To forgive ourselves is to recognize our faults our humanity and our humility, then with the grace of God we can learn to forgive others as we are indeed forgiven.

Time to grieve is something we often deny ourselves, time to stand in the bare empty landscape of winter feeling the loss of what has gone, waiting for the new breath of spring. Winter and waiting take time, and the trees remind us that the waiting is necessary. When the time is right, God will breathe new life into the tired dry bones of our existence and spring will return.

If we stopped our busy lives to feel God’s presence to recognize God’s breathe, breathing as we breathe; praying our prayers with our own trembling lips. Sighing our aches and singing our joys, catching and holding us in our failures and laughing with our success. Arms outstretched in welcome as we forgive ourselves, and our enemies. Imagine, just imagine!!! Flesh will be put on dry bones, the dismembered parts of our lives will be re-membered and the bones of deadness will bring forth new life, if we allow God to breathe life into us, if we surrender to Gods loving presence. If we simply rest and “be” with God then new life will return.

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